Prosecutor to consider criminal charges in Bountiful case

The RCMP has delivered a report on its Bountiful investigation to an independent special prosecutor, who will now decide whether criminal charges should be laid.

Peter Wilson will review the allegations that underage girls were transported between the community of Bountiful — in the Creston Valley of southeastern B.C. — and the United States, and other serious criminal offences, including child sexual exploitation, sexual assault and procurement.

Wilson was appointed special prosecutor in January 2012 after senior Vancouver lawyer Richard Peck resigned from the post.

Crown spokesman Neil Mackenzie said Wilson will consider whether to prosecute individuals associated with Bountiful from the early 1980s to the present. He's expected to spend several months reviewing the report before making a decision.

No details of the report have been released to the public.

Sgt. Terry Jacklin, head of the Bountiful investigation in Kelowna, said Wednesday he would not comment on the ongoing investigation or the report.

B.C. children's watchdog Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, an outspoken critic of Bountiful, said she's not privy to the contents of the report but is confident charges will be laid.

"I am hoping that an informed decision will be made promptly," she said. "This is a matter that has been held up for many, many years."

She said she was particularly concerned about allegations that polygamy leader Warren Jeffs is making phone calls from prison, where he is serving time for having sex with minors and arranging the marriages of prepubescent girls in B.C.

"A lot of time passes between these legal fence posts and the children are still there (in Bountiful). We can't forget that," said Turpel-Lafond. "The information that we have is that there are extremely disturbing things going on there."

The first police investigation of Bountiful began in the late 1990s. RCMP recommended criminal charges but they were never laid because the criminal justice branch had reports from legal experts suggesting the polygamy law was unconstitutional on the basis of religious freedom.

A second investigation was launched in 2004 following reports in The Vancouver Sun about child brides. When Peck did not recommend charges be laid, then attorney-general Wally Oppal hired another special prosecutor who did recommend charges against Winston Blackmore and James Oler. Those charges were later stayed when a B.C. Supreme Court judge decided that the second prosecutor had been improperly hired.

In November 2011, the B.C. Supreme Court upheld Canada's polygamy law, which makes multiple marriages illegal. In his landmark ruling, Chief Justice Robert Bauman found that while the law "minimally impairs" the constitutional right of religious freedom, it is justified by the harms polygamy causes to women, children and society.

The RCMP launched its third probe after Wilson was appointed in January 2012. That investigation followed The Vancouver Sun reporting in early 2011 based on documents in a Texas trial that eight girls — some as young as 12 — were taken to the U.S. to marry older men. Those documents were subsequently filed by the attorney-general's ministry in the constitutional reference case.

Among the evidence was a 2008 fax to the Ministry of Children and Family Development from a child protective services supervisor in Texas outlining how a 13-year-old girl from Bountiful had been taken illegally to the United States by her parents and married to Warren Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect that's unrelated to the mainstream Mormon church.

The fax was sent five months after Texas authorities had raided the FLDS's Yearning for Zion ranch and taken into care close to 400 women and children. The B.C. Supreme Court also received Jeffs's diaries, which included his directions to Bountiful parents about how to bring their under-aged daughters to the United States so that they could be 'married' in a religious ceremony to men, some of whom were as old or older than their fathers.

About 800 to 1,000 people live in Bountiful. About half are members of the FLDS; the rest follow Blackmore.

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